Now. I'm not a fan of Vista, and while I'd love to post a long, well structured rant about why, complete with discussion of what XP, Linux and OS X do better, why none of them are a perfect (or particually close) OS in their own right, and why they all need to compete in one OS market, rather than three-and-a-half rather different ones, I really don't have the time or necessary effort.

But half the entries on this list seem to equate to "turn IE7 into Firefox!",
some contributors deserve to be shot ("Allow Outlook Express to be installed in Vista and future versions!"), a few that are just fuck-off wrong ("Integrated anti-virus"), some I'm wondering what they actually mean ("Windows 'gaming' mode"?),
some I snort at (those mentioning using System Restore points, the system restore utility, ReadyBoost etc,
and someone who thinks that UNKNOWN devices in the device manager should allow the user to easily find out what they are (hint: if it could do that, it may not label them as such)),
some useless things, and finally some I seem to think Vista already has from my short trial of it.

Also a couple of things that I'd agree with, and that MS should have done already, and some I have no particular opinion on. But none of them address some of the more serious issues I have with Vista, and no-one mentions some of the things I did think that Vista could do better, in some cases without too much work.

But then, even if the employees at Redmond take a break from blazing down the route of change for changes sake, and take a look at this list, they'll probably be just as amused as I was.

27.09.07 - SocialCovert Networking?

This amuses me somewhat. A social networking site for CIA agents.
But does it come with features like multiple identity management? Will it have profile images enabled? Polls for ascertaining the best means of bugging a PC or phoneline?
Will it come with a raft of user created plugins for casting Harry Potter spells (confunding and invisibility only), leaving encoded graffiti messages, or the creation of quizzes to compare yourself against other like minded agents? If successful then will it expand overseas, adding in options for MI5, Interpol etc?

It's the fifth of the sixth of the seventh, and also the first post of the year...but I have nothing to say.

25.12.06 - ♫ No-one updates on Christmas Day ♫

So I'm taking up slack. Merry Christmas!

08.07.06 - Descending.

Things are kind of odd for me at the moment. After my exams finished I was then free of constant revision (the month
beforehand I basically dropped off the face of the earth), and then
after a week or two of relaxation was just left with dealing with stuff like cleaning up the rented house and moving all
my stuff back.

Then when I got home I had another week of rest, and now this week I've been bustling around attending interviews
for summer placements to earn some much needed money, and covering for my mother, who's away for the week in taking my
sister around various college open days, school things, and clubs.

My car (which I also had to take for its MOT at the beginning of this week) hasn't been used this frequently since I
was driving into 6th form every day! (Incidentally, what got me thinking about this was that I had to take the route which
I drove every day to get there to get to her club today, and it occured to me that it must be
the first time in a year (or certainly a good eight months) that I'd taken that route. And it me feel somewhat nostalgic about
those days in 6th form...)

Anyway, enough babbling.

06.06.06 - The day of Lucifer?

I've finally finished all my exams! Three in four days, and then a week later five in six days x_x

And when I was writing the date on my paper today it struck me that it was obviously time for an update (On that note I missed 04.05.06... )
And in regards to the title I may have had a little of the devils luck today! The paper that I ph34red the most turned out to be relief-inducingly easy!

Oh, I didn't poison myself by the way. Though even if I did, I could probably just have imported an Antidote ;)

28.02.06 - Quarternal.

Yo. The reason for this update? Well because today's not going to happen again for another four years.
Therefore I shall add it to my date collection up here on the site :)

As is the normal I have, and have had nothing interesting to write about, therefore I have written not.

See you next time I want to see a day of the year that takes my fancy in print ;)

(Oh, and hopefully I'll be eating pancakes sometime later on. Mmmm.)

UPDATE: I fail at pancake making. I mixed the batter OK, but about 9 tries of making the pancakes themselves,
and I only got something I was prepared to eat (and that still didn't look very good) on the last two attempts.
Finally I had to wash up and clean the kitchen for about an hour after having my pathetic two small 'pancakes' :(

If you don't hear from me again then I've probably managed to give myself some sort of fatal strain of food poisoning.

07.06.05 - Dates are good.

Uni exams are over.

w00t.

Also I exercised my creative skills messed around in Paint Shop Pro to produce a new background for the site.

29.05.05 - Untitled

A fortnight or so? Yeah right.
I think it's just a question of being in the mood to write...which as it happens I'm generally not.EDIT: I shall now proceed to contradict myself:

E3. If you haven't seen them already check out the Zelda:Twilight Princess teaser for the Gamecube, and the Final Fantasy 7 technical demo (It shows after the advert does, or you can save to disk from one of the links) which apparently shows what the PS3 can do.
They're mostly in Quicktime format, so do your PC a favour, and install Quick Time Alternative, rather than the official bloaty player. While I'm on the subject, there's also a Real Alternative for playing Real Player files (you really don't want Real junk on your machine). Both include plugins for Firefox and IE, and use MediaPlayerClassic (included with the downloads for offline playback)
The FF7 tech demo looks very pretty and impressive (I had to go back and watch the original in FF7 after seeing it) but I'm a little cynical about the fact that this is supposed to be rendered in realtime. In fact a fair degree of cynicism is what I feel when I look at the specs for the PS3 and Xbox 360... Still only time will tell. Also Clouds face looks a little too angular in the demo...

Personally I can't understand why Square will label FF11 as a Final Fantasy Game (which is just wrong, being a MMORG) in order to draw some extra cash from those who just see the FF label, but don't seem to be making any noise making a revamped FF7. They would make a frigging bomb on game and console sales. They haven't said they won't though, so the demo could just be to gauge public reaction.

Twilight Princess. This is what we're talking about Nintendo :)This is the sort of thing I want to see in a Zelda game. The graphics for Wind Waker appalled me at first, but when I got around to playing the game they weren't too bad, but I can't say I was a big fan. Also the game itself was pretty mediocre compared to Ocarina of Time. Judging from the trailer this has the potential to be something a lot better.

05.05.05 - The neatest day of the year

So I haven't updated for months (or about a third of a year to be precise).
So I'll try to write some junk now. This post is purely because its the fifth of the fifth of the fifth wherever you are. Except if you live in China or somewhere that keeps a different tally of years.

My absence is hardly because I've been busy...more like lazy, and having nothing of note to write about.

I mean I could say that first year Computer Science at Uni is on the whole pretty simple if you've ever coded before, or taken any previous computing/electronics related courses. But it's kinda boring isn't it?
Besides, the number of people that read this are a small handful of friends, and bored people who've wondered here from elsewhere.
I suppose I could have written about the games I've been playing (Chrono Cross, Grandia) since I got here...but I just havn't, due to lack of effort and stuff.
Still, this isn't too hard right? Just rambling on about junk. I mean I've written all of this already.
Like in the next few months I could get off my ass and talk about Grandia, which is what I'm playing now. It's better than just empty space right?
Or I just ordered Guild Wars. It will basically be my first MMORG (well ish. I did play a text-based Diskworld MUD for a short while years ago)

So in fact, maybe I have got material to write about (somewhat boring/geeky as it is), and it's just a question of writing and sharing it...so maybe check back in a fortnight or so :)

25.12.04 - Merry Christmas

As in the title. Have a nice day everyone :)

18.12.04 - Tweakin'

I attacked the CSS again today, after a thought occured to me, and now all cylinders are firing on Firefox, IE, and Opera. Woohoo!

Of course the only people that will see the difference are those using Opera...

08.11.04 - A fine line.

I had a play around with the CSS holding this page together today, with the result that the page now looks more consistant in
Firefox and Internet Explorer. However if I do so much as border the divs it breaks everything o_o; Still it all works at the
moment, and doesn't break with zooming, resizing, and throwing many different resolutions at it.

However, this has had the side effect of b0rking Opera (which used to display exactly the same as Firefox, just sans the
title div with the image in for some odd reason...). Now the main div doesn't get shunted to the side of the links one in it. I'm sorry any Opera users reading! >_<